Sarcophagus

The suit is designed to keep you alive at all costs, so you barely feel a thing as the ship peels apart around you and you’re sucked out into the abyssal dark of space. You register that parts of the disintegrating ship smash into you on your way out, but the kinetic dampeners built into the suit are second to none. They register as nothing more than little nudges, like someone brushing past you in a crowded room. All around you, composites and alloys shear and shatter and fold into one another. But your flesh, soft and pierceable, is pressurized and safe. You’ve been taught not to panic, but you can’t help yourself, eyes clamped shut, screaming at the suit to lock down and activate all possible safety measures. Once it confirms that you’re safe, you let yourself float, no sound apart from your breathing and the metronome of your heartbeat. Eventually, it slows. There’s the occasional jolt, barely registering, as debris knocks against you. It seems the ship hasn’t quite finished exploding; perhaps the splinter of rock that speared it ruptured the fuel tank as well, and what’s left is still busy tearing itself apart. You feel a momentary sense of weight as you’re pushed outwards, away from the carcass of the ship. There’s a dull reddening of your vision even as your eyes remain tightly shut; light forcing its way through the thin barrier of your closed eyelids. A big explosion, then. …